ation. If you get the irregular verbs of a language well fed
into your system, you've got the language by the windpipe.

"Then buy _Simplicissimus_. You'll pick up a good deal from
that--the popular expressions, the phrases and exclamations that are
going. If you learn to use the exclamations, it makes you
interesting and well-liked. It gives the other fellow the chance to
do the talking. _Simplicissimus_ and that kind of thing are better
than the dry, stilted German classics--'Ekkehard,' 'Nathan der
Weise' and all that discarded stuff. But remember that _esprit_ was
not given the Germans, because it would hide their Boeotian
stupidity."

"I haven't yet seen--I suppose I shall see"--said Kirtley, "why the
general American student like me is so persistently encouraged to
come to Germany. Why is it?"

"Because we are damn fools," heartily rejoined Anderson. "The
Germans don't have education. They have instruction. The one makes
gentlemen. The other makes experts. It is hard for an expert to be a
gentleman. They don't have gentlemen in Germany. No such word in
their language. It is a nation of experts, but that's precisely the
reason it should be feared. Why, education would teach a German not
to slobber at his meals.

"It is his strenuous ingrowing instruction that cultivates his
extreme national egotism until it has become like a boil. His racial
egoism helps obscure the obscure sunlight here in Germany and blinds
him. He has to wear spectacles. It is a natural cry, his cry for a
place in the sun."

"Should I have gone to England or France?" suggested Gard.

"Yes. At any rate, not here. The German procedure roughens the fiber
and lowers the moral standards of the general student. Instruction
here is along mental and manual lines. The Teuton is meant to be a
specialist. He is competent but not refined."

The two compatriots gossiped along about this and that.

"I'm having a devil of a time sleeping on my bed," confessed Gard.
"You ought to know about German beds. How do you get on with them?"

"The German bed helps to give the German his bad disposition. I put
two beds side by side and sleep across the middle. That's one way to
fool the German bed. If I saw yours I might be able to suggest
something."

Anderson frankly expressed a desire to visit the Loschwitz home. So
on Gard's invitation they had lunch and went out to his suburb.

CHAPTER X

SPIES AND WAR

They took off the bed clothes, includi